Hotels Charlie Chaplin Has Stayed At

Afternoon tea at The Ritz London comes with a live musical ensemble, cakes served from a trolley, and a jacket-and-tie requirement for gentlemen—a revealing introduction to a hotel that still makes an occasion of its daily rituals. Opened by César Ritz in 1906, it occupies Piccadilly beside Green Park, with Bond Street and the West End theaters close by. Its architectural reach extends into adjoining William Kent House, an 18th-century mansion whose restored dining rooms and suites became part of the hotel in 2006. Today, tea is served there, while The Ritz Restaurant holds two Michelin stars. The appeal lies in this sustained commitment to ceremony, from an afternoon’s tea service to a formal dinner.

Edwardian rooms in gray and tangerine and Art Deco rooms in gold and caramel give The Savoy two distinct visual identities, reflecting the eras that shaped it. The theatrical connection runs deeper than the decor: the hotel was built to accommodate travelers coming to see Gilbert and Sullivan at the Savoy Theatre. Today, its private approach off the Strand puts Covent Garden and the West End within a short walk, while river-facing rooms look across the Thames. Inside, floral sculptures rise above the lobby’s black-and-white marble floor, afternoon tea unfolds beneath Gallery’s glass dome with live piano, and the American Bar makes cocktails part of the hotel’s enduring social life.

The frescoes in Bar Joséphine spent years hidden beneath paint before their restoration for Lutetia’s 2018 reopening. Along with the central salon’s stained-glass ceiling, they give this Saint-Germain-des-Prés hotel a character rooted in its own architecture and artwork. Founded in 1910 by the family behind Le Bon Marché to accommodate the department store’s customers and suppliers, Lutetia combines Art Nouveau and Art Deco design. Architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte led its restoration, reworking the rooms and suites and adding a spa. Today, the bar’s six fresco scenes inspire its signature cocktails—a thoughtful way to make the building’s decorative history part of a stay on the Left Bank.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Grands Appartements give Hôtel de Crillon a distinctive design pedigree behind its Neoclassical façade on Place de la Concorde. Art runs through the hotel, with sculpture, painting and photography by established and emerging artists sharing space with its historic architecture. The rooms take a residential approach, pairing custom art and comfortable furnishings with marble bathrooms; suites add bespoke furniture, textiles and individually selected objets d’art. Tucked-away courtyards offer a quieter setting within the property. For an evening overlooking the square, Les Ambassadeurs serves cocktails alongside live music, with a terrace beneath the arcades—a place to appreciate the architecture as part of everyday hotel life.

Le Bristol Paris has a yacht above its rooftops: naval architect Cäsar Pinnau designed its sixth-floor indoor pool with teak decking and a trompe-l’oeil stern, with views toward the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur. That playful space adds a distinctive chapter to this grand hotel on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, whose rooms and suites follow an elegant Parisian style. A 13,000-square-foot courtyard garden gives guests room to linger, while the kitchens reveal how much is made here: the hotel mills its own flour, bakes its bread, and produces chocolates in-house. Three-Michelin-starred Epicure anchors a stay in which French cooking deserves as much attention as the address.

Royal blue in the lobby, a grand staircase and rooms furnished with silks and antique art give the Ritz Paris its richly layered character. César Ritz chose a private mansion on Place Vendôme for the hotel he opened in 1898; he and his wife, Marie-Louise, approached it as a vast private home, mixing periods and French decorative traditions. That residential idea still gives shape to a stay, from individually styled accommodations to the wood-paneled Salon Proust, where books and armchairs frame afternoon tea. Outside, the Grand Jardin extends the hotel’s sequence of salons into greenery, with magnolias, a fountain and wooden alcoves along a trellis gallery.